FIGHTING BACK: Pancreatic cancer claimed our town's Milton Wong recently, Jack Poole last year and Betty Ergas before that. Ergas's daughter, Myriam Glotman, and husband Geoffrey later raised some $300,000 to support research. This week, they had Dr. Daniel Renouf explain to reception guests how the BC Cancer Agency's Pancreatic Cancer Research Initiative will team genome analysis, clinical trials and nanomedicine technology against the lethal ailment. Myriam and Jane Hungerford will chair the fundraising Inspiration Gala Nov. 1, with Wong's widow Fei as honorary chair.
HOMELESS PRAYER: Give us this night our nightly bed.
NO SMILE, WE'RE MOD-ELS: Fashion designer Jason Matlo was ear-to-ear cheery when stony-faced catwalkers showed his fall-winter ready-to-wear line at the Shangri-La Hotel Thursday. It was a teaser for the global Fashion's Night Out celebration that should have retailers, restaurateurs, bartenders and even models grinning here Sept. 6.
HAWAII NINE-O: Wendy McDonald celebrated her 90th unquietly this week with a luau for hundreds of florally attired friends and family at North Vancouver's Pinnacle hotel. Thrice-widowed, McDonald sparked decades of respectful ribaldry by owning and running a ball-bearing firm with the kind of iron resolve that year-round sea bathing never rusted. Matching her manner, 94-year-old bandleader Dal Richards played the tenor sax for jiving and hula-dancing with the facility, invention and clear tone of a ridiculously younger fellow.
GORDON HIGHLANDING: Another nonagenarian, artist Gordon Smith, visited Capilano Golf & Country Club recently, when Grace Gordon Collins, Patti Hanneson-Hatch and Gloria Smith chaired a benefit for the Gordon & Marion Smith Foundation For Young Artists's $5-mil-lion campaign. It will endow the fall-opening Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art and Artists for Kids program. Set-ting the pace, a large-and-leafy Smith painting fetched $51,000 at auction.
POOCH POWER: If those $330,000-a-pop "monopoles" the park board has okayed don't have their electric-vehicle chargers well shielded, some leg-lifting dog may get a nasty shock.
BUCKS STOP HERE: Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini wants the $300-million team's financial information to stay private during his divorce case, The Sun's Neal Hall reported. He's certainly got a nifty place for stashing such moolah. The Aquilini Investment Group's downtown-office vault has a steel door that should stop any-thing short of the L.A. Kings.
COME AT ME BRO: Not the case with New Jersey Devils fans who, unlike some of ours, went home peaceably after their team's Stanley Cup loss.
BRUT TOUT: Prairial skip-per Denis Camelin greeted French consul-general Evelyne Decorps with genuine Champagne after mooring in North Vancouver Thursday. He'd just cruised from Tahiti via Mexico and California. But, with a military helicopter aft and can-non forward, his vessel is no cruise ship. It's a naval frigate, which will leave for Hawaii and Tahiti Tuesday. You're welcome aboard this weekend - sans Champagne, though.
POPE KNOWS: After a decade mostly in L.A., actress Carly Pope says she's producing and Matt Smiley directing the feature-length documentary She Has A Name about "violence, disappearance and murder" along Prince George-to-Prince Rupert's so-called Highway of Tears.